This page intentionally left blank Australian Sign Language (Auslan) This is first comprehensive introduction to the linguistics of Auslan, the sign language of Australia. Assuming no prior background in language study, it explores each key aspect of the structure of Auslan, providing an accessible overview of its grammar (how sentences are structured), phonology (the build- ing blocks of signs), morphology (the structure of signs), lexicon (vocabulary), semantics (how meaning is created), and discourse (how Auslan is used in con- text). The authors also discuss a range of myths and misunderstandings about sign languages, provide an insight into the history and development of Auslan, and show how Auslan is related to other sign languages, such as those used in Britain, the USA and New Zealand. Complete with clear illustrations of the signs in use and useful further reading lists, this is an ideal resource for anyone interested in Auslan, as well as those seeking a clear, general introduction to sign language linguistics. trevor johnstonis Associate Professor in the Department of Linguis- tics, Macquarie University. A sign linguist with an international reputation, he was author of the first dictionary of Auslan, and has published a number of papers describing the Auslan grammar. adam schembri is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University. Highly acclaimed for his work on Auslan, he has presented papers on the topic at a number of conferences, and has ten years’ teaching experience in linguistics. Australian Sign Language (Auslan) An Introduction to Sign Language Linguistics Trevor Johnston and Adam Schembri CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridg e.org /9780521832977 © Trevor Johnston & Adam Schembri 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2006 ISBN-13 978-0-511-26880-9 eBook (EBL) ISBN-10 0-511-26880-7 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-83297-7 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-83297-7 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-54056-8 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-54056-9 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. To our parents: Patricia and Eric Johnston & Marie and Charles Schembri Contents Acknowledgements page xi Conventions for sign notation xiii 1 Signed languages and linguistics1 1.1 What is language?1 1.2 What is linguistics?8 1.3 Signed languages: Myths and misconceptions 11 1.4 A brief history of the study of signed languages 21 1.5 Signed languages and gesture 22 1.6 Summary 26 1.7 Further reading 26 2 Auslan in social context 27 2.1 The deaf population, the deaf community and the Auslan-using population 27 2.2 Auslan and the deaf community 29 2.3 The language of the deaf community 30 2.4 Bilingualism and diglossia 41 2.5 Sociolinguistic variation in the deaf community 43 2.6 Summary 50 2.7 Further Reading 50 3 Auslan and other signed languages 53 3.1 Signed languages of Aboriginal Australia 53 3.2 The origins of Auslan 54 3.3 British Sign Language (BSL) 55 3.4 From BSL to Auslan 57 3.5 BSL and Auslan compared 60 3.6 Auslan and Irish Sign Language (ISL) 65 3.7 Auslan and other signed languages with some BSL contact 66 3.8 Auslan and other unrelated signed languages of the world 71 3.9 Emerging signed languages of the developing world 74 3.10 Summary 75 3.11 Further Reading 75 viii Contents 4 Phonetics and phonology: the building blocks of signs 77 4.1 The internal structure of words 77 4.2 The internal structure of signs 79 4.3 Sign parameters and notation systems 81 4.4 Minimal pairs in Auslan 82 4.5 Sign types 83 4.6 Manual signs 84 4.7 Non-manual and multi-channel signs in Auslan 96 4.8 Constraints on word and sign structure 99 4.9 Simultaneity and sequentiality in sign structure 108 4.10 Features, segments and syllables 111 4.11 Phonological processes 114 4.12 Summary 116 4.13 Further Reading 116 5 Morphology: sign formation and modification 117 5.1 The morpheme in signed and spoken language 117 5.2 Morphological processes: Derivation and inflection 123 5.3 Sign formation processes 124 5.4 Processes of sign modification 136 5.5 Summary 156 5.6 Further Reading 156 6 Lexicon: the structure of Auslan vocabulary 157 6.1 The Auslan lexicon 157 6.2 The native lexicon 159 6.3 The non-native lexicon in Auslan 176 6.4 Summary 187 6.5 Further Reading 188 7 Syntax: the structure of sentences in Auslan 189 7.1 Word classes in Auslan 189 7.2 Sentences and their constituents 197 7.3 Sentence types 199 7.4 Constituent order in simple clauses 202 7.5 Content questions 208 7.6 Topicalisation 209 7.7 Pseudo-clefts (or ‘rhetorical questions’) 210 7.8 Negation and affirmation 211 7.9 Constituent order in clause complexes 212 7.10 Coordination and subordination 213 7.11 Basic word order? 215 7.12 Summary 217 7.13 Further Reading 217 Contents ix 8 Semantics and pragmatics: sign meaning and sentence meaning 219 8.2 Types of meaning 224 8.3 Sign, sentence and utterance meaning 227 8.4 Sign meaning 227 8.5 Iconicity and metaphor in Auslan 232 8.6 Sentence meaning 242 8.7 Utterance meaning 246 8.8 Summary 252 8.9 Further reading 252 9 Discourse: structure and use above the sentence 253 9.1 Register, style and genre 253 9.2 Information structure 265 9.3 Cohesion 270 9.4 Summary 277 9.5 Further Reading 277 10 Issues in the study of signed languages 279 10.1 Issues of theory 280 10.2 Issues in data collection 282 10.3 Issues in signed language description 284 10.4 Conclusion: signed languages and linguistics 295 References 297 Index 319 Acknowledgements We would both like to acknowledge the debt we owe to all our deaf friends and colleagues (and for Trevor, this also includes many relatives) who have put up with our separate obsessions with Auslan and other signed languages over the years. Of course, more generally, the cooperation of scores and ultimately literally hundreds of people from the deaf community throughout Australia has been crucial. You have all informed the writing of this book by answering questions and by being involved in various ways in research projects. Without you it would not have been possible. Thank you. We would like to thank our reviewer, Terry Janzen, for constructive criticism that helped improve this book. We are also indebted to Louise de Beuzeville for very useful feedback on an earlier draft of the entire book; Della Goswell and Donovan Cresdee for comments and sharing their native signer intuitions with us; Breda Carty for some of the ideas in Chapter 3 and Jemina Napier for thoughts on Chapter 9. We are also grateful to the following individuals and organisations for their assistance and support: Alistair McEwin, Julia Allen and the New South Wales Association of the Deaf; Robert Adam, Ann Darwin, Karen Lloyd and the Australian Association of the Deaf; Mandy Dolejsi, Della Goswell (again!) and the Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association; Ian Rogers and the Auslan Educators Network; Rebecca Ladd and the Deaf Society of New South Wales; Darlene Thornton, Patti Levitzke-Gray, Kevin Cresdee, Stephanie Linder and Kim Pickering. We are especially grateful to the Australian Communication Exchange. A grant under their ‘Friends of ACE Support’ scheme made it possible for Adam to take leave from other projects and to spend three months in early 2005 concentrating on the writing of the book. We would also like to gratefully acknowledge the following organizations for financial support for research that informed this work: the Australian Research Council (ARC grants A59131903 and LP346973), the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (Sydney) and the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Project (London) (grant MDP0088). Some parts of this book draw on material that first appeared in the following publications (although most of the material has been considerably reworked): Chapter 2 and the appendix to Signs of Australia (Johnston, 1998) published by North Rocks Press; Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and The Structure and Formation of Signs in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (Schembri, 1996) also published by North Rocks Press; Chapter 3 and BSL, Auslan and NZSL: Three languages or one? (Johnston, 2003a) published by Signum Press; Chapter 10 and Sign Language: Morphology (Johnston, 2006) in K. Brown (ed.), 2006, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2nd Edition, (p. 324) published by Elsevier. xii Original drawings by Shaun Fahey first appeared in The Survival Guide to Auslan (Johnston & Schembri, 2003) published by North Rocks Press. Additional images not found in The Survival Guide to Auslan are derived from the original drawings by Shaun Fahey (see above) or from those by Peter Wilkin in the Auslan Dictionary (Johnston, 1989). They were created through the magic of digital manipulation by Trevor. Handshape drawings used in Figures 4.8 and 4.14 are reprinted with permission from Prillwitz et al.